


What Happens in Twin Peaks

by Lynzee005



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Smut, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10241330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: A series of ficlets inspired by this Tumblr post: http://lynzee005.tumblr.com/post/158052555528/send-me-a-number-and-a-paring-and-ill-write-aI got a ton of prompts for Twin Peaks pairings and decided to put them here because why not? :) Rated M overall but each ficlet has its own rating at the beginning, and some are G/PG, so even if you're not keen on adult ratings, you may still find something you like!





	1. "Will You Just Hold Still?"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedemptionByFire (steelneena)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/gifts), [leoben](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoben/gifts), [tkg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkg/gifts), [tqpannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tqpannie/gifts), [protecthewitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/protecthewitch/gifts), [Tina1014](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tina1014/gifts).



Cooper/Audrey: Rated G

For tkg (bowserbabe)

 

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**

 

“Will you just hold still?”

Audrey gripped Cooper’s wrist in hers, turning his arm so his palm faced the ceiling and so she could get a better look at the heel of his hand. The splinter embedded in the soft flesh at the base of his thumb was large, and deep. She winced and sucked in a breath through her teeth, and Cooper once more attempted to pull his hand away.

“Not so fast!” she reprimanded him again. She maneuvered his arm so it stayed tucked against her body, with her elbow holding him fast, and cast a side-eyed glance in his direction. “Really, Agent Cooper. You’d think you were a Kindergartener.”

Agent Cooper made a soft noise of complaint. “Audrey, really, I can do this myself.”

Audrey sighed and let go of his hand. “Suit yourself,” she told him as his arm fell away. “You asked for my help.”

Cooper examined his own hand, a nauseous glaze in his eyes. He swallowed. “I don’t handle splinters very well.”

Audrey hazarded a small laugh. “It’s nothing,” she said.

He stared at her wide-eyed and offered his hand out to her. “I’m reasonably certain that this piece of wood could be used in the construction of a house, Audrey.”

“Sssh,” she whispers, taking his hand in hers once more, gentle and soft. “Close your eyes, Agent Cooper. I’ll be quick.”

He was nervous—she could feel it in his pulse and the way his palm was sweating as she held it in hers—but he did as he was told, shutting his eyes and relaxing as much as he could. Audrey smiled and studied his face, the placid expression he wore everywhere except in his knitted brows, the way his dark lashes rested against his cheeks and fluttered as he moved his eyes beneath his lids, the line of his mouth set firm as he gritted his teeth, which only served to set his jaw more firmly.

Dale Cooper was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on. Of that Audrey Horne was absolutely certain.

She lowered her eyes to his palm again and examined the splinter. “How did you get this?”

Cooper sighed. “Chopping wood.”

Audrey chuckled. “Chopping wood for what?”

“Sheriff Truman needed help and…ah…” he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Point is I’m here, and it’s stuck in there, and all things considered I think this is more painful than when I got shot, so…”

Audrey traced a finger around the piece of wood, admiring the fine lines of his hand as she did so. “Cedar,” she whispered.

“Hm?”

“It’s cedar wood.”

“How do you know that?”

“I grew up here, Agent Cooper. I think I’d know West Coast cedar when I saw it,” she said. “Plus, I know that’s all Sheriff Truman uses in his fireplace. It’s very aromatic.”

“Is it?”

“Mmm,” she muttered, lifting a pair of tweezers in her hand. She knew it would be easy to get the splinter out; half of it was sticking out as it was. It was just a matter of grabbing the end and pulling…

“You have a very interesting palm,” she said, descending with the tweezers. “The lines…”

“You’re a palm reader?” Cooper smiled. “Is there anything you don’t do, Audrey?"

She focused on his hand. “I don’t really read palms. I just…have an interest,” she said as she grasped the free end of the splinter. Cooper gasped and instinctively drew his hand back; Audrey paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Your head line, for instance, splits into two.” She traced the line with the tip of the tweezers.

“What does that mean?”

“You’re very sensitive,” she whispered. “One of the lines is very straight and the other curves. So you’re creative but logical.” She nodded. “That sounds like you.”

“How would you know?”

Audrey shrugged. “Call it a hunch.” She continued to trace the lines. Cooper’s hand relaxed against hers. “Your heart line suggests that you put others’ needs before your own, especially in matters of emotion.”

Cooper swallowed. “H-how does that square with your hunches?”

Audrey smiled and squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Seems to fit,” she said, looking back at his palm, working her way down towards the splinter again. She stopped, though, at his life line, and furrowed her brow in concern. “Your life line is…”

“How?” he asked, his voice soft and dreamy. “Well it’s long…but it’s broken in many places,” she drew along it, slowly, stopping at each break.

“What does that mean?"

Audrey looked up at him, as if seeing him for the first time. “That you’re everyone’s rock during hard times,” she said. “And that you’ve had many traumatic experiences in your life.”

Cooper’s own brows drew together over his eyes. Audrey took the information she’d gleaned and filed it away before turning her focus back to the splinter. In one quick motion, she grabbed the free end and pulled. The whole piece came clean before Cooper even noticed. She dropped it from the tweezers into his hand and set the instrument down on the table beside her and picking up a adhesive bandage and a disinfecting wipe.

“All done.”

He opened his eyes and looked down at the piece of wood—a half inch long and wider than any splinter she’d ever seen, if she was being honest—and then back up at hers. “I didn’t even feel it.”

She opened the wipe and gently applied it to his skin, cleaning the hole as best she could. Then she tore into the bandage and applied the sterile section to the wound, securing the adhesive strips on either side. Then, as a matter of habit, she lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a soft kiss to the bandage.

As she dropped his hand, she felt herself blushing. She didn’t know what had come over her. “Better?”

All Dale could do was nod.

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**


	2. "Your Eyes Are Red...Were You Crying?"

Cooper/Audrey: Rated G

For your reading amusement, this is the song I imagined that they would dance to at the end (this kind of arrangement, obviously...not this exact version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXhLF9QkeNI

For tqpannie.

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**

“Your eyes are red.” 

Dale’s voice broke through the din that had spilled into the small anteroom when he’d opened the door and disturbed the stillness of her hideaway. He realized his faux pas and let the door shut behind him, quietly allowing the latch to click and plunging the room back into silence and virtual darkness. What little light there was left–coming from a dim bulb in the centre of the room and the red EXIT sign over a far door–illuminated Audrey’s face in halftones. It was enough for him to see that it was her, though, and that was all that mattered. He’d been looking for her for twenty minutes already.

She was was sitting on a vinyl chair behind the shuttered coat check counter. In front of her was a small book. Her hand grazed its pages as she thumbed through it.

Dale took a step into the room. “Were you crying?”

Audrey sniffled and sat up. “A little,” she told him, smiling at him. “Don’t worry: good tears.”

He had never really understood the concept of good tears, having never truly experienced the sensation himself before. But he knew Audrey well enough to know that her sensitivity not only allowed for but demanded such things, and he smiled as he walked over to her. “What’ve you got there?”

Audrey lifted her hand off the page and looked down as if surprised to find a book there at all. “This?” she asked. “It’s the guestbook.”

Dale reached her side and peered over her shoulder at the pages, on which the names and well-wishes of a hundred people were written in various slants and degrees of legibility. “Shouldn’t that be at the gift table?”

Audrey shrugged, and her hair bounced against the delicate slope of her shoulders. “I just wanted to read what everyone said, that’s all.”

“Surely it’s all wonderful,” he said, reaching over and closing the book as he took a seat beside her.

“Of course it is.”

“And the tears then–?”

Audrey turned her attention to him then and smiled. “This day has been everything I could have ever dreamed of. Since I was a little girl, you know? My dress is perfect, my hair, the cake, the flowers, everything…” She sighed, but continued to smile. “All these things I never ever in a million years thought I’d have, and I have them now. Here. Today. It’s just a little overwhelming, that’s all. ”

_ Overwhelming?  _ he thought. That didn’t sound like a good thing, and he began to worry again. “You shouldn’t feel overwhelmed, Audrey. If you do...if there’s any way I can fix that…”

“Oh Dale.” She laughed, tossing her head back a little as she did. “It’s nothing that needs fixing. I’m very happy. Happier than I’ve ever been. I just wanted a moment to sit here and reflect. Absorb it all. I don’t want to forget a moment.”

_ That _ was a sentiment he understood completely.

Dale sighed and smiled, training his ear on the sound of the band in the other room as they kicked into their next song. Audrey heard it too, and she sat up, pushing the book away in front of her. With a quick sniffle, she straightened her shoulders and then sighed. “Enough of that, then,” she said, smiling over at Dale. “Would you dance with me, Mr. Cooper?”

He nodded and smiled, standing up as he took her hand. “I thought you’d never ask, Mrs. Cooper.”

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**


	3. "There's a Leaf In Your Hair."

 

Albert/Harry: Rated PG (language)

For leoben (thisisteal)

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**

Albert stood at the edge of the lake watching ducks skimming the water’s surface fifty yards from the shoreline. The kind of crystal clarity afforded by the early morning alpine air was not something Albert was particularly used to, or fond of. There was too much green; the trees were green, the air was green, it  _ smelled _ green. Green was too fresh, too alive. Give him bleak Philadelphia stormclouds or a grey mid-winter blizzard and he’d be right at home.

But the water’s edge was where he’d found Harry, coffee in hand, as the sun crested the foothills to the east and poured over the eastern Washington landscape like melted butter, which really just made Albert hungry more than anything. He’d tramped out to meet him, and there they’d been standing for fifteen minutes now, in total silence, giving Albert enough time and space to think about what he should say, or if he should say anything at all.

Harry stood at his side, not so close that people might talk but close enough that Albert could smell his aftershave.

Albert very much liked Harry’s aftershave.

Three days had passed since Coop had stumbled down off the mountain. Albert had taken the first plane he could from Philly to Seattle, and drove all night to Twin Peaks once Harry called to tell him what had happened. Albert had listened to Harry’s stories about how different Coop was, how worried Harry had been for the entire day that Coop was missing and how that worry hadn’t dissipated but had just shifted to a different gear, locating itself in his marrow now that the FBI Agent had spent so much time giggling to himself and speaking in tongues in his room at the Great Northern, where he’d been under lock and key and rotating guard 24/7 ever since.

_ Was that all this was? _ Albert wondered.  _ A manifestation of Harry’s worry for Coop? Is that why this all happened? _

Albert didn’t want to believe that. So he swallowed the thought away, pushing it deep and hard down his throat, suddenly wishing he’d poured himself a cup of coffee before coming out.

At that moment, as if he’d been reading his mind, Harry handed him his mug. Albert peered into the pitch black depths of the coffee, swirled it in his hand twice, and took a long pull. It was hotter than he expected it would be, and he felt it burn his tongue and the roof of his mouth before relishing the sensation as it chased his fear into the pit of his stomach.

The medical examiner in him couldn’t help but catalogue the various parts of his anatomy that were being scalded as the liquid descended, imagining the reaction in the tissue lining of his esophagus and how it might look if he were to pull it out and look at it under morgue lights somewhere. But eventually he felt the effect of the morning’s first hit of caffeine in his system–a process he understood but which didn’t fascinate him nearly as much–and relaxed, breathing in and allowing the fragrant aroma of the coffee to bloom in his nasal cavity, triggering olfactory receptors that brought a rush of memories to the fore.

_ Burnt coffee in the Arch Street building’s cafeteria. His first coffee and cigarette after the last time he failed to quit smoking. The taste of stale coffee in Harry Truman’s mouth the night before… _

Albert blinked his eyes slowly, mentally changing the subject as he looked down at the coffee cup and then handed it back to the Sheriff.

“There’s a leaf in your hair,” he said, breaking the silence for the first time and feeling like a fool for choosing these words to do it with. Still, he couldn’t help himself, and reached up and over to remove the small green leaf from the curls atop Harry’s head. He held the leaf out to show Harry, as if proving to him that there was a leaf, that this wasn’t simply an excuse to touch him, though Albert didn’t know why he would think Harry would suspect that.

_ What a fucking joke _ , Albert thought, directing the insult at himself as he felt embarrassment and anger well up inside. He just about turned and walked back up to the house, and probably wouldn’t have stopped until he’d gotten in his car and driven clear across the continent to his crappy apartment in Philadelphia, and–

“Aspen,” Harry said with a small smile.

Albert blinked. “Hm?” he asked, even though he’d heard exactly what Harry had said.

Harry just chuckled and took another sip of coffee, then turned his attention back out over the lake. The ducks were gone. Sunlight shimmered on the tops of the ripples they’d left behind in their wake. Albert’s right side felt warm, and he realized that Harry was standing two inches closer than he’d been before; like the ducks in water, Albert was swimming in Harry’s scent, but before he could appreciate the metaphor, Albert felt Harry’s fingertips against his own. He scarcely moved, barely breathed, as Harry’s hand slipped into his, and suddenly, Albert wondered if he couldn’t just get used to the colour green after all.

He wouldn’t leave for Philadelphia. No, he’d stay. He’d stay for Cooper. He’d stay for so much more.


	4. "Look Into My Eyes, What Do You See?"

Cooper/Audrey: Rated G

Based very loosely on the fortune teller scene in Charlotte Brontë's  _Jane Eyre_

For RedemptionByFire (muldertorture)

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**

“Look into my eyes...what do you see?”

Agent Cooper–his borrowed ten-gallon hat perched on his head, with his fake handlebar mustache getting in the way every time he tried to breathe in–settled uncomfortably into the chair in front of the gypsy fortune teller.

It was certainly one of the tackier aspects of the Twin Peaks Sheriff Department’s Halloween party, but Cooper could hardly fault Truman for the indulgence; it had been a trying year. So when Truman–dressed as Teddy Roosevelt, of all people–had nudged him towards the “Gypsy Caravan” behind the accordion doors of the kitchen, Cooper had smiled and gone along with it.

Now, sitting in a wooden chair in the darkened, candlelit space next to the coffee maker and a dozen pink boxes of donuts he could smell from a mile away, Cooper couldn’t help but smile, feeling his ridiculous mustache catching on the real stubble of his cheek.  _ For Truman _ , he thought to himself.

“What do I see?” he asked as he leaned forward and looked into the eyes of the older woman sitting in front of him.  _ What do I see?  _ he wondered. It was dark, but he could see the flicker of candlelight against the woman’s irises. Lighter eyes. Grey? Green, maybe. It was hard to tell. Thick kohl outlined each eye and extended, wing-like, from the outer corners. Up close, she didn’t seem to be as old as she had when he’d first sat down. She wore a veil, and wispy strands of grey hair curled out from beneath it at her temples and along her forehead. Her nose and mouth were covered, too, by a thin and gauzy fabric patterned in paisley. He couldn’t see her lips.

She smelled like roses.

Coop continued to take note of the features he could see, making few deductions as he went along. “I see…”

“Do you see...your future?”

He tried not to laugh at the thickness of the woman’s accent, which was obviously put-on for dramatic effect. It occurred to him that this could be someone from the town playing the role, hoping to pull a fast one on him, and he set his mind to uncovering who it might be.

He shook his head. “No, should I?”

The woman leaned back and narrowed her eyes at him.  _ Is it Norma? No...maybe Lucy! _

“I’d read your tea leaves but you are a coffee drinker,” the woman said, slowing over the vowels, dragging out the the r’s, sounding every bit like Bela Lugosi’s understudy as she did.

“Can’t read coffee grounds?” he joked.

“There is no story to be read in coffee,” she replied, pausing for dramatic effect. “Only sleepless nights.” The gypsy looked down, her jangly earrings and necklace tinkling as she did. “But I can tell that you take your coffee black. Black as the first night of winter.”

_ Shelly Johnson, maybe?  _ He slicked his ring finger over the mustache to fix it in place where it had come unglued.

“Maybe I tell your fortune in my crystal ball?” she asked, lifting a rather large glass ball in her hands.

_ It’s not Nadine Hurley… _

“What are you going to see in that?” Cooper asked.

The gypsy shrugged and made a show of waving her hands over the globe. “I am getting a picture. You are a deep thinker. Very philosophical,” she said, shutting her eyes as she switched hands over the globe, her ringed fingers  _ clinking  _ the glass. “You are...in love.”

Cooper narrowed his eyes at the woman.  _ Sarah Palmer? No...that was just a lucky guess on her part.  _ “Maybe I am,” he said, careful not to give anything away to the stab in the dark guess.

“Hmm,” the woman said. “This woman you love...she is very beautiful, yes?”

Cooper conjured the image of her in his mind without much effort at all, and felt himself smile.

The old woman chuckled. “Ah, that is all the answer I need.”

Cooper shifted in his seat and felt his mustache come unglued again. With a frustrated huff, he ripped the thing off his upper lip and tucked it into the pocket of his cowboy costume’s buckskin vest. “Go on,” he said.

The old woman cocked her head to the side. “You are a handsome man,” she said, setting the globe in her lap and putting her hand atop his. He felt the cold weight of her rings against his fingers and froze.

_ Maybe it is Nadine… _

The woman continued. “But I suppose women tell you this all the time.”

Cooper pulled his hand out. “Who are you?” he asked.

The woman smiled. “Look into my eyes…” she repeated. “And tell me what you see.”

Cooper was too intrigued now to ignore her request; he wanted to know, and he wanted to figure it out for himself. So he leaned forward again, focusing on her eyes. 

“Do you see it yet?” she asked.

“See what?”

“Your future.”

He was so focused–laser-attention, directed right at her–that he didn’t notice her hand coming up to his cheek, or that she had drawn herself to within an inch of his body, and that she had removed the veil covering the lower half of her face. If he had, he would have recognized her immediately.

Instead, recognition dawned when she pressed her lips to his in a soft but all-encompassing kiss. It took him several seconds to react. But react he did, energetically, once he realized who it was.

She pulled away from his lips and grazed the cup of his ear. “Happy Halloween, Special Agent.”

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**


	5. "Shhh, They'll Hear Us"

Cooper/Audrey: Rated M (sexual content)

For tkg (bowserbabe)

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**

“Shhh, they’ll hear us.”

Cooper stilled his movements and trained an ear on the door to his office. All was silent on the other side; he was certain there was no one else in the Sheriff’s Department anyway, but even if there had been, he wasn’t sure it would have mattered to him.

He turned his attention back to the side of Audrey’s neck and kissed a line along the curve of her jaw, humming his response. “Mmm...you know what?” he whispered against her skin. “I don’t care.”

“I find that hard to believe, Agent Cooper...” she replied, gasping through her words as his lips found her pulse point. 

He pulled back for a moment, his eyes searching her face, accepting the challenge she had apparently laid down in front of him. 

“Oh really?”

She smirked at him, biting her lip as she giggled, and it was more than enough of an invitation. He scooped his arm beneath her and lifted her higher, pressing her back against the wall and pushing up within her, once. And then again. And then  _ again. _

Her tiny lilting laugh dissipated as she sucked in a deep breath and moaned around her exhale, urging him on as best she could while he held her fast against the wall. He ground his feet into the carpet, looking for purchase; she reached a hand up, up, up, seeking the same. She found it first, fingers latching onto the top of the heavy wooden door frame around the storage closet on her left. Audrey held on and pulled, hoisting herself away from him only drove him further as he chased her up the wall, delving deeper, more and more harried with each thrust.

Audrey closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, exposing the line of her throat, pale in the waning afternoon sunlight that spilled in through the gaps in the slats of the window blind across the room. In the warm light, her skin glowed, toned in shades of coffee cream. Each sound, each mewl, each keening gasp that tumbled from her lips could be seen written on her throat first, and Cooper felt heat in his cheeks and along the tops of his ears—his ‘tell’—as he watched his name ripple along her vocal cords, over and over and over until...

The raucous cacophony of voices in the lobby startled them both, but Audrey was already tumbling, unable to stop herself; she leaned forward, pressing her mouth to Cooper’s shoulder, and groaned her release into his taut muscles at the very same moment that he followed her over the edge, pulsing within her as he muffled his own voice against the side of her neck.

The voices outside died away, laughter bouncing off the walls as the party moved to occupy a different space. Cooper took a shuddering breath against her skin, and Audrey responded with a shiver that traversed the length of her spine beneath Cooper’s hands as he held her against him. 

“You don’t care, hm?” she breathed into his ear.

Cooper smiled kissed her jaw and sighed. “You do  _ something _ to me…”

Audrey picked up where he left off. “ _ Something that simply mystifies me… _ ”

He smiled, the corners of his lips curling up lazily at the sight of her, the sound of her voice. “Something like that.”

Several seconds passed before they fell apart, Cooper gently lowering Audrey to the floor, which she reached on tiptoe, steadying herself by pressing her palms into his chest. She smoothed her skirt down over her hips; he readjusted his trousers. A section of stray curls had teased their way out of the clips holding Audrey’s hair back at the sides of her head; Cooper reached up and combed them back. Audrey closed her eyes and leaned her head into his hand, humming tunelessly to herself. 

“I love you.”

He wasn’t sure who said it, whether it was his voice or hers that first spoke those words into the space between them. He knew in that moment--five years almost to the day since their first breakfast meeting at her father’s hotel--that it was true; he did love her, all of her.

She smiled up at him and kissed his palm. “I love you too,” she whispered, and that’s when he knew that he had been the first to say it. It didn’t bother him in the slightest. 

Dale Cooper never stood a chance against the absolute hurricane that was Audrey Horne. 

**^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^ ^♢^**


	6. "Don't Look At Me Like That!"

Cooper/Audrey: Rated G

For RedemptionByFire. 

Inspired by the song [“Don’t Go” by Hannah Georgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9w7WKEZddU)

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

It was raining— _But when is it ever not raining here?_ he asked himself, remembering that this is how it always was—and he was soaked through to the bone, standing on the sidewalk in front of the walk-up, halfway between his car and her front door.

_Well, not_ her _front door. The_ building’s _front door. Her front door is somewhere up there, guarding a third floor apartment on the southwest side of the building. It’s small, maybe 600 sqft. One bedroom but it has lots of windows and she has a balcony so it’s okay. She gets the evening sunlight during the long summer days. She drinks coffee there, on a simple metal bistro set, with her feet up and a book in her lap. She grows tomatoes and petunias in cedar planters and wire hanging baskets lined with coconut fibre. She has a galvanized steel watering can but she never uses it because it’s always raining. Eventually she punches drainage holes in the bottom of the watering can and plants petunias there, too._

_She’s happy._

_Don’t do this._

He stood on the sidewalk soaked through to the bone, and even though he couldn’t stop himself from shivering, he found himself paralyzed, unable to seek shelter. Run aground halfway between the lingering warmth of his car and the vestibule of the building, he waited.

For what, he didn’t know.

He felt like a fool.

He didn’t know what any of this was going to accomplish anyway. If he pressed the buzzer beside her name on the door panel, and if she came down to see him, she’d ask questions he wouldn’t be able to answer. Questions about where he’d been for the last five years— _“Philadelphia, mostly…”_ —and what he’d been doing— _“Working. Recovering. Avoiding.”_ She would ask him why he’d left, even though he was certain she would have heard and understood why there was no way he could stay. She would want to know why he had never come back, never written, never called, and he would be forced to say he’d been afraid of what might happen if he did.

He didn’t want to admit how long he’d been parked across the street in the cold Northwest drizzle. He didn’t want to admit that he’d followed her home. That he’d seen her by accident, that he’d been curious, and that before he knew it he was parked outside watching her move through window sheers from room to room, backlit by accent lamps until finally there was nothing but the cool glow of her television to tell him she was still awake.

_Maybe. Maybe she falls asleep to the sound of her television, just like you. Because it’s lonely otherwise…_

He couldn’t tell her that there’d been no one in his life—friends and co-workers, but no one significant enough to share his life with. And for the most part he’d been okay with that, had accepted that perhaps this was how things would go now: early loves would blend into one nostalgic haze, while the only real loves in his life would remain ever-fixed in the moment of their passing from his orbit to another. One dead because of him, one afraid of seeing him, and one as-yet remarkably unspoilt by the damage he knew he would inflict if he took those steps up the sidewalk…

_Don’t do this._

But every every once in awhile he would catch the scent of Chanel No. 5 in the air, or his palms would tingle, and then she would come to him in dreams, beautifully languid, mist-like, settling over him until he couldn’t tell where his skin ended and she began. She was always so sad and scared, like the night she thought she was drowning and he’d held her until she fell asleep. Except in these dreams there was nothing he could do to help her because there was nothing for him to hold.

He’d wake up in tears every time.

_She’s not like the others…_

The dreams were what brought him back, convinced him that this was a sign he needed to be here. He hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly—he’d only arrived that afternoon—but nevertheless, here he was.

And there she was.

Rainwater swept down his forehead and into his eyes. He shivered. He thought of her, alone in her apartment— _How can she have an apartment? What kind of world is there she she would live in anything even remotely like an apartment?!_ —warm and dry and watching television and he wondered if it was too late to buzz and then he shivered again and took the next step.

^♢^

She knew he was out there. She’d known for hours now, since he’d followed her home from downtown.

Yes, his sudden departure had hurt her; his silence in the intervening five years had hurt even more. But seeing him standing on the sidewalk, smushing his toe into piles of mud, made her realize he was hurting too. Differently, she imagined—she knew the score, how things had ended, what had precipitated his flight back to Philadelphia five years earlier—but still as deep.

Why else would he stay locked in his car for two and a half hours on the opposite side of her street? Why wouldn’t he come up to say hello? Unless he thought he couldn’t, or shouldn’t.

And why would he think that?

She left the lights on for a while, debating whether or not to go down and tell him to come in. That became even more pressing once she’d realized he was standing in the rain, debating his next move. He looked cold. It wasn’t good for anyone to be out in weather like this.

Still, she waited. Was it an intrusion on her part to make assumptions about what he wanted to do? Would inviting him in ruin whatever journey it was he seemed to be on? Did he even want to see her?

She didn’t care where he’d been, or what he’d been doing. She’d heard enough from those few people he did talk to to know that his life had changed dramatically since he’d left. He’d been living ascetically, quiet and alone on the other side of the continent; she just wanted to know why it had taken him until now to wonder if she’d fit into his plan the way she always knew she would.

_That’s why you’re not mad,_ she told herself as hour three began. _You know he’s here for a reason. You’ve known since long before he knew that this was going to be the next chapter in the story you share with him._

Suddenly she found herself mapping out her small apartment to fit the lives of two people instead of one. _Will he like the art I’ve picked out for the walls? How many books will he bring with him? Double the dishes in the kitchen cupboards. Double the towels in the bathroom linen closet. Double the size of the bed in the master bedroom…_

She felt silly, but hopeful. It had been so long since she last filled the him-shaped hole in her life. And she was very tired of sleeping with the television on.

A stiff breeze through the open window off her balcony blew the curtains inward and carried with it the scent of petunias. She stood up then and moved to close it. The retro-styled watering can outside was filled to overflowing with rainwater—it trickled and splashed out of the hole in the top and poured down the sides and through the slats in the metal table on which it sat—and she began to wonder, once again, why she even owned a watering can to begin with. She shut the window, leaving a small gap, enough for the scent to come in, and when she came back to her perch, she noticed he had moved. Was moving. Walking up the sidewalk to her door.

Quickly she threw her sweater back on and slipped her feet into her ballet slippered flats before heading down the stairs, one ear quirked back listening for the buzz that never came.

_Maybe he’s debating again. Maybe he won’t actually buzz. Maybe he’s going to stand on her stoop for another three hours before turning around and heading home…_

She was on the last landing when she realized all of her suppositions were incorrect; the vestibule door had been left open, and he had let himself in.

^♢^

They came face to face—he on the lowest step, she on the top—and each held the other’s gaze as the long seconds passed.

_Don’t look at me like that,_ he thought as he took a step to meet her.

_Don’t look at me like that,_ she wanted to tell him as she descended.

But neither said a word, and they came to meet at eye level. His eyes were red but he had no idea he’d been crying; she let a smile whisper across her face and his heart surged in his chest.

“You’re cold.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“Do you want some tea?” she asked, before realizing her mistake and shaking her head. “Of course you don’t…but maybe it’s too late for coffee.”

He shook his head, never breaking her gaze. “Is it too late—?”

She was already reaching out to him, lifting strands of ice cold rain-slicked hair from his forehead, twisting them and laying them back atop his head. He shut his eyes and leaned into the warmth of her fingertips, and her heart surged in her chest.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s never too late.”

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^


	7. “Why are you giving me such a hard time about this?”

Cooper/Audrey: Rated PG

For protecthewitch/rosewatermilk (Tumblr)

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

_“How did that make you feel?” **  
**_

_Dale shook his head and looked at the clock on the wall. There was still a half hour left in the session with the FBI psychologist, a tall and very attractive brunette named Dr. Elyse Harringbrook, who sat across from him with her notepad on her lap and her distractingly long legs crossed at the knee._

_He took in a breath and, once again, shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”_

_The FBI psychologist in the chair opposite him put her pen down and smiled. “Take your time. Think about it. How did you feel when your mother died?”_

_Once again, Dale glanced at the clock. He didn’t want to think about his mother. He didn’t see what that had to do with being trapped in the ninth circle of hell while his doppelganger roamed free, wreaking havoc for weeks._

_He shut his eyes and tried not to think about the Red Room. It had been four months since he’d gotten out. Quick thinking on the part of Sheriff Truman, backed by the muscle of the FBI courtesy of Albert Rosenfield and the spiritual aid of Major Briggs had seen to that._

_But of course none of it would have been possible without Audrey…who’d been the first to know something was wrong, and the only one brave enough to confront the evil in front of her…_

_No, don’t think about Audrey…Dale told himself._

_Instead he thought about all the reasons he could never again think about anyone the way he’d once thought about Audrey. It was a pattern. Women he loved were never around for very long. Marie…Caroline…Annie…_

_Audrey can’t be next, he told himself, a more firm edict than he’d ever given himself before. You pushed her away once to save her life. You have to do it again._

_“Dale?”_

_“Death follows me,” he said._

_Dr. Harringbrook quirked an eyebrow. “Hm?”  
_

_He blinked twice. “Death has taken everyone I ever cared about,” he told her. “My mother. My early lovers. Caroline. Annie, who may as well be dead considering I am never going to see her again.” He nervously picked at a flap of dry, dead skin along the cuticle of his left thumb. “Maybe Jean Renault was right when he said I brought the nightmare with me…”_

_Dr. Harringbrook flipped through her notepad, searching for the name he’d brought up. “Jean…Renault? The…uh…the drug dealer?”  
_

_But Dale was lost in his thoughts. Abandoned and alone, he was filled once more with the same crippling despair that had marked each of his days since his exit from the Lodge…_

_The same despair he felt he’d never shake, and only ever came close to forgetting during those hours of the day when Audrey would steal into his room and they’d talk until sunrise…_

_“Stop…” he muttered to himself. His hands were sweating and he was gripping the cushions of the settee in both fists, knuckles white, arms shaking._

_“Dale…?”_

_He lifted his eyes to hers and blinked away his tears._

_“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”_

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

 

Dale couldn’t see straight. He was running on autopilot—as he’d been doing for the last two days, first spent driving to where she was and then waiting—and was near the end of his tether, his last frayed nerves being held together with the barest of threads; it took all of his energy to focus on the buttons in the elevator, or to find his hotel room key in his pocket.

His hands were shaking. His whole _body_ was shaking. When they reached the door to the hotel room and he made the first, desperate attempt to key the lock, his uncooperative fingers jackhammered brass-on-brass for several seconds before Audrey gently removed the key from between his thumb and forefinger and slid it into the lock herself. The tumbler moved, sliding and falling heavily—audibly—into place within the lock mechanism.

She turned the knob; two angry red lines ran around the circumference of her wrist. He knew there were matching marks on her other wrist. And even if he hadn’t read the police report (a dozen times) or heard the story in her words, or had been the one to cut them off when she had first been released, he would have known just from looking at the marks that they had been made by zipties.

He shut his eyes and ground his back teeth together until he heard blood rushing in his ears.

The door swung open and Audrey stepped in first, still clutching the key in her outstretched hand. She looked around—two queen beds, a small TV, a coffee machine on the counter, his overnight bag overflowing onto the floor beside the dresser. The sun was setting, throwing shades of orange and umber around the room and bathing them both in its warm glow. The way it backlit her, throwing her in silhouette, made her look unreal, haloed, a shimmery mirage that might disappear any second.

Dale stood in the doorway and counted to ten to make sure she was real.

_Ten…nine…eight…_

He feared none of it was real. That he couldn’t tell the difference anymore. His hands tingled. And he shook them at his sides.

_Seven…six…five…_

“Agent Cooper?”

_Four…three…two…_

“Agent Cooper, are you not going to talk to me for the rest of the day?”

_One…_

He shut the door behind him and let out a long, shuddering breath.

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

 

_“She’s in Montana,” Albert told him over the phone._

_“Montana?”_

_“She was on a Greyhound headed for Philadelphia.”_

_Dale felt his blood start to churn; he’d been there when Lucy had gotten the news bulletin at the Sheriff’s Department only that morning. A hostage situation at a Greyhound station in Billings._

_“What happened?”_

_“Apparently they stopped to fill up with gas and pick up passengers. She was at the gas station coffee counter when all hell broke loose,” Albert sighed. “Three men. Tree huggers. Something about the fucking Exxon Valdez…”_

_Dale hadn’t heard the rest. All he could do was imagine Audrey…_ _  
_

_“…the goddamned Wild West out there…one step up from robbing stagecoaches…”_

_He could barely speak. His heart hammered in his chest and bile rose in his throat. He coughed, and Albert stopped talking. “Albert…?”_

_“Already on it, Coop.”_

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

 

She stood with her back to the wall beside the bathroom. The clothes she’d been wearing had been washed by one of the front desk agents on duty at the downtown Billings FBI office; she carried them in front of her in a large paper bag with raffia handles, something from a local garden centre and the only bag the Agent had been able to find for Audrey when it came time for her to leave.

The clothes she wore were straight from the Academy: dark blue sweatpants, light grey long-sleeved athletic t-shirt with the FBI crest on it. Dale had a half dozen of these shirts kicking around his apartment in Philadelphia. Seeing it on Audrey—a woman he’d normally see in plaid skirts and cashmere sweaters—was jarring.

Until he remembered where they were. Why they were there. What had happened.

Dale latched the door, the tremble in his hands making the task extra difficult as he slid the chain into the track.

“Agent Cooper?”

“Why were you in Billings in the first place?”

He turned around to face her but took one look at her and had to look away, swallowing past his heart and trying to keep his coffee down. Gritting his teeth once more, he hummed through the worst of the anxiety and hoped she couldn’t hear him.

“I-I was going to Philadelphia,” she said. “I was going to try and convince them to let you have your job back.”

Dale shut his eyes and shook his head. “I’m on a leave of absence, Audrey,” he said. “I wasn’t fired. I can have my job back at any time.”

Audrey was silent. Several seconds elapsed before she replied, simply, softly: “Oh. I didn’t know.” But then, in a heartbeat, her tone changed. Sparks lit her voice. There was acid on her tongue. “Maybe I didn’t know because you never tell me anything.”

He wanted to be angry. He wanted _nothing_ more than to be angry. But Audrey was right. They’d had nothing but time, a hundred late night talks and a hundred early morning breakfasts, and in all that time he’d let her do all the talking because…well…

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

 

_Dale watched a dozen FBI Agents descended on the gas station and the next thing he knew he was hearing six gunshots. Six staccato beats to shatter the mid-morning stillness. Birds in the tree down the street took flight. Somewhere off in the distance a dog began to howl._

_Then, nothing._

_Ten seconds. Albert gripped him at the elbow. Ten seconds. Closed his eyes. Ten seconds._

_Nine._

_Eight._

_It’s the one thing he learned from the one therapy session he’d taken after his ordeal in the Lodge: counting to ten. Deep breaths and basic numeracy were apparently all anyone needed to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder._

_Seven._

_Six._

_He knew it was more than that._

_Five…_

_Footfalls on pavement. Running. Voices. Dale opened his eyes and saw the FBI team rushing the hostages out the front door as a second team lobbed tear gas canisters into the space to smoke out the perpetrators. Someone yelled that they were getting away out the back door._

_Dale didn’t care._

_He zeroed in on Audrey—the only face in a sea of faces that he could focus on, even from across the distance between them—and broke away from Albert, though there wasn’t much fight on his end at this point. Dale’s dress shoes slapped the pavement as he ran to her; Audrey stared at him, dazed. There was blood on her face—not hers; spatter from, presumably, when the FBI bullets had caught one of the hostage takers. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy and as wide as silver dollars._

_He swallowed thickly, realizing he was in that moment as stricken as she was. “Are you okay?”_

_Wordlessly, she lifted her hands to him, and he saw her wrists were still bound with plastic zipties. He reached for her, holding her cold and trembling hands in one of his while he fished his keys from his pocket with his other, producing a small Swiss Army knife._

_“Hold still,” he murmured, stepping closer to her._

_She nodded, never taking her eyes off his face as he focused all of his attention on sliding the knife between her skin and the plastic tie, slicing through the left and then the right cuff to free her._

_“There,” he said as the plastic fell to the ground. He put the knife away; she rubbed the tender marks on her arms._

_“Thank you.”_

_Dale chanced a glance and found himself drowned in the clouds that fell from her eyes as she folded herself against him. He didn’t hesitate a moment before wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her close, closer than he thought possible, until he wondered how he’d ever be able to let her go again._

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

“Why are you giving me such a hard time about this?” Audrey asked. “I was trying to help you.”

“You could have been killed.”

“I didn’t know that when I left. You can hardly fault me for—”

“You shouldn’t have left in the first place.”

“What, so I’m supposed to sit in my room and never, ever leave your sight?”

“Ideally…”

“…What?”

He looked up at her, standing just off the wall, hands on her hips, defiant but stymied. Her face registered her confusion; he knew his own face mirrored it. He stood up a bit straighter and cleared his throat. “I mean—”

“Ideally?” she asked, her tone softening. “Ideally what?”

He shook his head. “Audrey, it’s—“

“Dale?”

She had used his name only once in the months they’d known each other. Hearing it now, falling from her lips, hinged on the upturned inflection as she searched for the answer he was hiding from her.

He shut his eyes again and fisted his hands at his side, but before he could count to ten, Audrey’s sharp inhale brought him back to reality.

“Please don’t be angry,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to be angry with me.”

He was startled enough to open his eyes, and saw her backed up against the wall again, anguish written plainly on her face.

“I’m not angry with you.”

“I-I just can’t…I can’t handle…”

Dale took two slow steps towards her, closing the gap between them with deliberate movements intended to not frighten her.

_She’s been traumatized. You’re being insensitive._

“I’m not,” he told her. “I was…scared.”

She looked up at him, fresh tears coursing down her face. “Of what?”

Dale was gutted. _Don’t you know?_ he wanted to ask her, but of course… _you never told her, did you?_

She’d been out of his life for two days this time. One Eyed Jack’s had kept her from him for another week. The three weeks he was trapped in the Lodge brought the total number of days of separation to a month.

A whole month in the grand scheme of things was nothing. But it was one whole month out of the six that they’d known each other, so it was a month too long.

“Everyone I love…everyone I’ve ever cared about…” he paused, clearing his throat.

Audrey reached out and grasped his hands in hers, the marks on her wrists plainly visible. He squeezed her fingertips, moving his hands to trace the lines, whispering his touch over her.

“They leave,” he said finally. “Or they die. But either way, they’re gone before I’m ready for them to leave.”

Audrey clucked her tongue. He was standing so close he could smell her skin, clean from the shower at the FBI office earlier that day. She was so warm; he leaned forward and down, barely, and touched his forehead to hers.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he admitted. “But I can’t lose another person. I can’t lose…”

“I’m not like the others.”

He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of that truth settle over him: Maybe she _wasn’t_ like the others. They’d been separated _how many times_ now? Three times? For a _month_?

She _always_ came back.

“Audrey…”

But his words were spoken against her lips. Instead of stopping her, as he would have once done, he breathed her in and slanted his mouth across hers, deepening the kiss as she lifted her arms around his neck and he pushed her back against the wall…

 

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

 

In the pitch-black pre-dawn, with the sun barely lightening the horizon, Dale sat in the stiff, angular armchair beside the bed, watching Audrey sleep, wondering at his luck or lack thereof and what exactly he was getting himself into.

Being with Audrey had been everything he imagined it could be and like nothing he had imagined would ever be, and he couldn’t figure out why.

He was no stranger to physical intimacy. That part was easy.  

Emotional intimacy on the other hand…

_“…you never tell me anything…”_

He’d learned so long ago that there was little to be gained from telling someone about his problems. Keep your cards close, he’d once been told, and even though it was during a literal card game, the metaphorical meaning was not lost on him. He knew it marked him out as odd, but he had no need to share. Sharing meant giving away a piece of yourself, and if you weren’t careful you could end up with nothing.

This had been his approach, the platitude on which he’d hung his hat since the day he held his mother’s hand in the hospital as the warmth left her body. He’d seek out the people who needed him more than he needed them. He’d fix them. Save them. He’d always do good, and never get too involved.

He’d developed a penchant for unavailable women as a result, although it hadn’t exactly served him well…

 _The heart wants what the heart wants._ That was something else he’d heard, somewhere, sometime. Maybe it was in a movie, or a book. Or maybe a greeting card. It hadn’t made sense to him though. The heart was the one organ doctors knew everything about; it didn’t have wants, not in the way it was popularly put forward. People who said _the heart wants what the heart wants_ were confusing the excitatory responses of the pleasure centres in the amygdala with a non-existent emotional response centered on a mass of muscle whose one and only purpose was to move blood around the body. There was no actual connection.

Then why did his chest ache as he watched Audrey, bathed in moonlight and tangled in bedsheets they’d messed up together?

He sighed and considered his options. He could push her away, again. He could run away himself. Or he could admit that maybe it was time to face the demons that lived inside his head.

None of the options made him feel very good going forward to wherever it was he was going, but only one of them ensured that he wouldn’t be alone when he got there.

“Dale?” Audrey whispered. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

He leaned forward, angling his body towards her and reaching towards her; he traced a finger along the soft skin of her inner arm. “It’s almost morning,” he replied.

“So?”

He smiled and brushed a few errant strands of hair from out of her eyes. “I was just thinking…”

“Well, think horizontally,” she mumbled as she turned over to face him. “I want to hold you…”

The words struck him, again, right in the solar plexus; a curious feeling, to be sure, and one that he wasn’t sure he was ever going to get used to.

 _You’d better,_ he warned himself. _Audrey Horne is going to be around for a while._

The stars outside winked out into the brightening firmament as Dale Cooper lifted the covers and crawled into bed again.


	8. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Gordon/Shelly: Rated G

For tkg/bowserbabe (Tumblr)

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

Shelly lifted her eyes from the pie crust—which she’d simply lined along the edges with a folded over strip of aluminum foil—and smiled. “It’s just a baking shield,” she shrugged, adding: “It’s not like I invented the thing.”

But Gordon was looking at her as though she hung the moon, and Shelly didn’t feel like disabusing him of that notion, so she spun the pie plate and pushed it down the length of the stainless steel prep counter towards him.

“Put it in the oven?”

Shelly nodded. “Yup. Start checking it at about thirty-five minutes. Take it out when the crust is golden brown.”

Gordon lifted the pie plate as gently as if it were made of spun sugar and put it in the very centre of the oven rack. Shelly wiped down the last of the flour from the counter before dusting her hands on her apron and folding her arms across her chest.

“You made your very first Double R pie, Agent Cole,” she smiled. “How does that feel?”

He stood up ramrod straight and lost his grin. “Please, Miss Johnson, I insist that you call me Gordon.”

“Only if you call me Shelly,” she countered.

He considered, briefly. “I suppose that’s fair,” he nodded, checking his watch. “Thirty-five minutes, eh? Time for coffee.”

“If you’re buying.”

Gordon shot her a thumbs up, backed by a wide smile. “It’s a deal!”

Shelly chuckled and turned to walk out of the kitchen, stopping to grab two ceramic mugs from beneath the coffee counter. Gordon stepped up beside her and took the coffee pot.

“Shelly, why don’t you sit down and let me pour the coffee,” he said.

It had been years since Shelly had been served at the diner in which she worked. The concept seemed foreign to her. But Gordon was determined and she had no reason to say no, so she backed away and rounded the corner to sit at one of the stools on the opposite side. Within seconds, he’d placed a mug of coffee in front of her, and one in front of himself.

“So aside from those incredible pies, what else do you make on the menu?”

Shelly wrapped her hands around the mug, hemming and hawing for a moment over her answer. “Well, I do the baking and Norma does the cooking, mostly. They’re her recipes, anyway. So, ummm…well, there are the pies, mostly…I do the breakfast pastries—the croissants and danishes and cinnamon buns. The cookies too.”

Gordon was amused. “Is there anything you _don’t_ do?”

Shelly glanced around the empty diner, just to make sure. “It’s top secret, Gordon, but here it is: I don’t make the donuts,” she smiled. “We order them from a bakery in a town out on the highway.”  
  
“Outstanding,” Gordon said as he took a sip from his coffee mug.

Shelly wasn’t entirely sure how the friendship had started or why it continued, but Gordon Cole was two steps away from following Agent Cooper into the Twin Peaks real estate market and Shelly was ninety percent positive that she was the reason for it. And while that might have, at one point, struck her as odd, she was pleasantly okay with it now, after everything that had happened.

There were things about Gordon that Shelly was dying to know. He was a mystery to her, much like his ability to hear her was a mystery to him. For the first time in her adult life, Shelly was relating to another person on a relatively level playing field.

Maybe that’s why she was teaching him how to bake pies in an empty diner at ten pm on a Saturday night, after a very long shift…

“You know what’s amazing?” Gordon said, cutting into her reverie.

She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there, dazed and in her own world. She hoped it hadn’t been too long. “No, what?”

“I’ve spent so many years yelling at people to make sure I’m being heard, and then I meet you and I find myself speechless.”

Shelly blushed. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Scout’s Honour,” he replied, holding up three fingers in the air beside his head.

She grinned and shrugged. “Well maybe I’m just boring. A small town girl who works at a diner…people like me don’t inspire a lot of deep thought and big conversations.”

At this, once again, Gordon lost his smile. “Don’t say that, Shelly,” he told her, suddenly very earnest.

Shelly shook her head and took a sip from her coffee mug. “Well it’s not like—”

“Do you really not know how special you are?”

Stopped mid-sentence, Shelly was suddenly forced to confront the idea that nobody—save Gordon—had ever taken the time or felt the inclination to tell her she was important. She’d never heard it growing up; she’d _certainly_ never heard it from Leo. Even the compliments she wrenched from Bobby, while sweet in their own way, felt small and childish all of a sudden in the face of the words Gordon was saying to her now.

Nervous and a little bit shocked, Shelly sat up and pushed errant strands of hair away from her forehead and behind her ear. “Am I?” she asked.

The way Gordon nodded at her tied knots in her stomach. She blushed and distracted herself with another sip of coffee.

From back in the kitchen, the sound of the oven timer ringing broke through; Shelly sprang to her feet.

“Oh no you don’t,” Gordon said, and Shelly grinned and sat down. “You’ve been an absolute angel this evening, and I will repay the favour in kind.” He pushed himself up and made his way toward the kitchen.

The next thing Shelly heard was a yelp of pain.

“Gordon?” she called out.

“I SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN THE OVEN MITTS!”

She dashed off into the kitchen. She found him standing in front of the oven with the door wide open, holding his right hand in his left and staring at his fingertips.

“It’s the darndest thing…” he said.

Shelly pulled him to the sink on the opposite wall and ran his hand under cold water. She could see the thin line across three fingertips where he’d grabbed the oven rack to pull it out and retrieve the pie.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” she said as she held his hand beneath the running water. “Does it hurt?”

“Not too badly,” he admitted. “I guess I’m just not thinking all that clearly.” Gordon cast a glance back at the pie. “Is the pie done?”

Shelly did the same, peering into the open oven. “Looks pretty close,” she answered.

Gordon pulled his hand out from the water and turned off the tap, shaking the excess drops from his fingers with a quick shake. “I wonder if you might allow me to drive you home this evening, Shelly Johnson?” he asked, and then, without waiting for her response: “And if I might be so bold as to ask you to join me for brunch tomorrow morning. Coffee and pie. Or omelettes. Or waffles. But definitely coffee.” He added: “My treat.”

Shelly cocked her head to the side. “That sounds perfectly lovely, Gordon. I’d be honoured.”

“Aces,” Gordon said, rolling his fingers into his palm without thinking as he flashed her another thumbs-up, and grimacing from the pain. “I think I’m gonna let that pie cool down though before I go trying to pick it up again.”

Shelly laughed. “I’ll pack it,” she told him, turning on the water once more. “You just…stay here. Don’t move.”

“Yes ma’am,” he told her, sticking his hand under the water and watching her take command of the kitchen, as though she owned the place.


	9. "I'm not bothering you, am I?"

Shelly/Harry: Rated PG

For @lynchgirl90 (Tumblr)

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

“I’m not bothering you, am I?”

Looking up from the bucket of napkin-wrapped knives and forks at the end of the lunch counter, Shelly locked eyes with Sheriff Truman and shook her head with a genial smile. “Not at all,” she replied, glancing down at the three binders and sheafs of looseleaf covering the Formica bar.

It was _absolutely_ in the way. But despite the fact that they’d said nothing to each other for the entire twenty minutes he’d been sitting there, Shelly was enjoying the company.

“Would you like another coffee?”

Harry glanced in his cup, paused to consider, then nodded. “If you could warm it up…thanks.”

Shelly put the bundle she was rolling into the grey bin and retrieved the coffee pot. She studied the man as she poured. He was one of the only people who consistently removed his hat when he came into the restaurant; it wasn’t normally the kind of thing that Shelly noticed but when it came to Harry, it was hard not to take notice. Ever since Shelly had been in Twin Peaks, the handsome Sheriff had captivated her imagination. As a small girl, she used to imagine herself getting into trouble—stuck in the middle of the river in her dad’s boat, say, or caught out in a thunderstorm on a while hiking near Pearl Lakes—and the big and strong then-Sheriff’s Deputy sweeping in to rescue her, taking her back to town in the front seat of his truck, letting her have a whole bottle of Coke to herself as they drove.

Eight and nine and ten year-old Shelly liked Coca Cola almost as much as she liked Harry Truman.

As she got older, the imagined rescue scenarios got more detailed, more dangerous, and with bigger stakes: fantastic car crashes, wild animals cornering her in dark caves, scary kidnappers and murderers and rapists holding her for ransom. The end was always the same—Sheriff Truman bursting in to save the day, removing the immediate threat, taking Shelly away from danger in his strong arms and then…

In the early days of her relationship with Leo, Shelly had harboured a secret hope that Harry would leap in and stop her, because even she knew back then that this was a disaster waiting to happen. But he never did, and she married the guy, and she had to wonder if that was all it would have taken to prevent the intervening years of abuse and sadness on her part—if only someone had stepped in.

 _Not that you would have ended up with Sheriff Truman_ , she scolded herself as finished the pour. He was a man of nature, someone who needed a wise, strong woman; someone to lumberjack alongside him as he carved his way through the world.

Shelly watched as Sheriff Truman’s eyes smiled and he combed a hand along the side of his head, through his curls.

_You’re none of those things, Shelly…_

“I’m…uh…I’m sorry about Josie,” she blurted.

The sheriff’s sharp inhale drew Shelly’s attention. She wondered if maybe she’d overstepped. But he nodded and offered a kind smile. “Thanks, Shelly.”

 _Crisis averted_ , she thought. _Think before you speak next time!_ She cleared her throat. “You…you seem extra busy today.”

“Yeah,” he drawled, sitting up and straightening his back, which cracked twice.

Shelly winced. “Paperwork?”

“Mm,” Harry intoned. “An FBI Agent goes missing for twenty four hours in the middle of the woods, you’d better believe there’s paperwork.”

Shelly set the coffee pot down on the counter. “So it’s true then?” she asked. “Agent Cooper really did disappear for a whole day?”

Harry frowned, wondering suddenly if he’d said too much. Shelly gave a quick laugh and brushed it off. “Sorry, I just—”

“No, it’s okay,” he replied. “I’m not used to dealing with cases of this magnitude. I mean, you know…Twin Peaks is a ‘cat-up-the-tree’ kind of town, not a—”

“Evil-forces-living-in-the-woods kind of town,” Shelly finished his sentence, shivering in spite of herself.

Harry took a gulp of his coffee, never once taking his eyes off of Shelly; she pretended not to notice, but it was the only thing she could notice. When he set his mug back down, he reached a hand out to rest on top of the hers. “Hey, Shelly…we’ll find Leo. Don’t worry.”

Shelly shook her head, banishing the thoughts. “Oh, it’s not that…well, maybe it is, but…”

Harry closed the folders in front of him. “How is your security detail working out?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. “I get a police escort home every night and back to work again in the morning. Staying with Norma really helps too.”

At that the sheriff was taken aback. “I didn’t know you were staying with Norma.”

“Ever since the pageant, actually,” Shelly nodded. “It’s better than being out in the woods all alone, y’know…at least until Leo is found or…”

She trailed off, staring at the handle on the coffee pot. Her finger traced the hard plastic outline, up one side and down the other, before she spoke again.

“What’ll happen to him when he comes back?”

“Well…he’ll be arrested for his role in the mill fire,” he started. “We’ll also be questioning him about his attack on you and Bobby in your home.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “So he’ll go to jail?”

Harry studied Shelly’s face. “That’s for the courts to decide, Shelly. Not me.” He still had his hand resting on hers, and he moved his thumb back and forth across her skin, so slowly and whisper-soft that she barely noticed.

“ORDER UP!” the line cook’s voice called, and Shelly started. She smiled at Sheriff Truman and pulled her hand away from his. She put the coffee pot back on the burner and walked to the order window, and hoped that her she wasn’t trembling as much as she thought she was.

“You okay, Shel?”

She nodded at the cook. “Fine,” she said with a smile. “Just fine…”

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^

An hour later, Harry began packing up his things into their respective folders just as Shelly rounded the corner from the employee break room, her coat in her hand, her work shoes in a plastic bag.

Their earlier conversation lingered in his mind. It had been the entire reason why his paperwork was still annoyingly half-finished and why he hadn’t done much of anything except drink too many cups of coffee instead of focusing on the official FBI report.

He’d never before been distracted by Shelly Johnson; what was it about today?

He cleared his throat as she passed by on her way to the front door. “You heading home Shelly?” he asked.

She stopped and nodded. “Just as soon as Deputy Brennan gets here,” she said. “I’m going to call him right now up at the station.”

Harry waved his hand. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

Shelly hiked her purse up on her shoulder and smiled, and Harry noticed a blush creeping across her cheeks. “You will?” she asked.

He nodded, fishing a few bills out of his pocket and leaving them on the counter, where Shelly’s replacement picked them up with a smile. “Sure thing,” he said.

“Isn’t it out of your way?” she asked.

“Norma’s place?”

Shelly grinned and shut her eyes. “I forgot…”

It was amusing to watch her get flustered; he smiled in spite of himself and started to walk towards the door, his folders tucked under his arm.

They drove in virtual silence along the twilit streets towards Norma’s, passing by the familiar landmarks that, in darkness, took on different connotations; mailboxes loomed and hedges towered and buildings that in daylight smiled with bright windows and flowers in the yard by nightfall simply conspired with the inky black silhouettes of the trees in their yards to block out the stars. Shelly clutched at her bag in her lap, all stiff angles as she sat.

“You cold?” Harry asked.

“No,” she answered, loosening up a bit. “It’s dark out tonight, isn’t it?”

They approached a four-way stop and Harry leaned forward to peek out the front windshield. “New moon tonight,” he said.

Shelly leaned forward herself, slowly and in increments, to spy the same. “Huh,” she said as she cast her eyes heavenward. “That explains it, I guess.”

Harry smiled as he watched her. “You’re something else, Shelly Johnson, did you know that?”

She sat back and stared at him as he slowly pulled away from the Stop sign and through the intersection.

“Me?”

He laughed. “Yeah, you,” he said. “I don’t know, I guess…well, ever since you were a kid, you’ve always been so no-nonsense about everything. You see the world as it is and you accept it and it’s just…” he paused, turning the wheel as he pulled onto Norma’s street. “It’s refreshing, I suppose. We realists are few and far between these days.”

Shelly smiled; Harry caught that out of the corner of his eye.

“A realist, huh?” she asked. “I suppose I haven’t had any real exciting dreams for myself in a long time.”

Harry swallowed. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, I know what you meant,” she said. “It’s funny because…well, just today I was thinking…no, never mind.”

“No, what?”

He pulled up to Norma’s house and put the truck in Park, while Shelly chewed on the inside of her cheek in the passenger seat.

Finally: “Well, Sheriff Truman, not many people know this but when I was a little girl, I had…a bit of a crush on you.”

Harry began to laugh. “No…”

“It’s true,” she nodded. “So I suppose even my wildest, most exciting dreams were realistic. Sort of. I mean, in a sense…” She squeezed her eyes shut groaned before muttering to herself. “Oh, Shelly again?…”

Harry just chuckled, but part of him wondered what it was she really meant by that comment. Her wildest, most exciting dreams…? “Well, I’m flattered, Shelly. Really,” he told her instead.

She shrugged. Even in the darkness, he could tell she was, yet again, blushing from ear to ear; but her face revealed something of the anguish he was certain she’d been feeling and hiding, masterfully, for weeks. “It’s nothing,” she said. “The schoolgirl fantasies of a stupid girl about to embark on some of the worst decisions of her young life aren’t exactly—”

He keyed off the ignition, and the truck fell silent. “Shelly…”

She smiled and sighed. “No it’s okay. You drop out of school and marry young, you can’t expect much more, can you?” she looked out the window at the black expanse of lawn leading up to Norma’s front door, clutching her bag to her chest once again.

It wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have, but it was the one he was in, so he took control of it and tried to steer it back to calmer waters. “Shelly… what I said earlier, about it being up to the courts…if it were up to me, you know… for what he did to you… I’d—”

“Sheriff Truman…”

He slid towards her on the bench seat and put his hand on her shoulder, and she leaned down, pressing her cheek to his knuckles.

“You’ve got your whole life…”

She nodded. “I know. But until Leo is found, what can I do with it?”

Harry paused and considered his next move very carefully. With care and slow precision, he brushed the side of her face, and she turned to face him as he cupped her cheek.

“You can do whatever you want with it,” he told her.

Shelly’s eyes found his, searching his face for answers. “Would you kiss me?”

 _Gladly_ , thought the Sheriff, as he leaned into the space still left between them to meet her halfway…

^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^^♢^


End file.
